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Glances at Inner England 



By the same Author. 



GINX'S BABY: his Birth and other Misfortunes. 
Thirtieth Edition. Crown 8vo. price zs. 

LORD BANTAM. Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo. 
price 5s. 
A Cheaper Edition is also published, price 2s. 6d. 

LITTLE HODGE. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 
price 55-. 

A Cheap Edition, sewed, price is. 

LUCHMEE and DILLOO ; a Story of West Indian 
Life. Illustrated. 2 vols, demy 8vo. [Preparing. 



Henry S. King & Co. 

65 Cornhill and 12 Paternoster Row, London. 



Glances at Inner England 



A LECTURE 



DELIVERED IN 



THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA 



EDWARD JENKINS, M.P. 




Henry S. King & Co. 

65 Cornhill & 12 Paternoster Row, London 
. 1874 






{All rights reserved) 



The Essay which constitutes this volume 
was, under the title of ' The England of To- 
day/ read last Autumn and Winter by the 
author in various parts of the United States 
and Canada to audiences ranging in number 
of attendants from five hundred to twenty- 
five hundred persons. The author's reasons 
for so frankly reviewing among foreigners the 
less favourable conditions of English society 
are fairly stated in the lecture. He selected 
such topics as he thought would reflect some 
lessons upon questions of vital interest to 
Americans or colonists. 

The author deems it unnecessary, in an 
age which is conspicuous for the study of 



VI 



comparative politics, to offer any explanation 
to his countrymen of the candour with which 
he has treated among foreigners of national 
evils and weaknesses which he has never 
hesitated to expose at home. Some petty 
growls in one or two small provincial com- 
munities, from people who, for want of any 
definite idea in politics, consider a vague 
ultra-loyalty to be equivalent to a whole 
scheme of economy and general political 
Apostle's-creed, were too insignificant to 
deserve notice at the hands of anyone who 
mixed in Imperial politics, and were too 
much involved with narrow and mean local 
prejudices to be taken as an indication of the 
opinion of any intelligent British society. 

But, though he has nothing to apologise 
for, it is just that the author's statements 
should be reviewed by the British public, and 
if false, be corrected — if improperly applied, 
be confuted. Hence the lecture is published 
precisely as it was given in one or other of 
the great cities of America. The whole, as 



Vll 



here presented, was obviously too long for 
any single evening, and therefore different 
passages were selected to be delivered in 
different cities ; but they were read as here 
produced, and the lecture in the aggregate 
is correctly reported. 

The author has another object in publish- 
ing this lecture just now to the English 
public. It was prepared by an Englishman 
familiar with American life and institutions, 
to be read to Americans, and he was perforce 
obliged to look at the condition of England 
rather from the point of view of an outsider 
than of an Englishman. Hence he believes 
that, at this particular juncture, the lecture 
will be valuable as a fresh, simple, and com- 
prehensive review of the difficulties in the 
way of the Reform party in England. 

In its present situation, the more fre- 
quently and variously that party may be 
reminded of the work before it, the better 
heart may it pluck up to endeavour to redeem 
itself from its defeat. 



Vlll 



It should be explained, to account for 
several errors of the press, that this edition 
was in print before the author's return to 
England, and has not been revised by him. 
The reader will also observe that in speaking 
of Parliament the author refers to the period 
of Mr. Gladstone's Ministry k 

Temple, March 12th, 1874. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I. Outer England i 



II. Definition of Subject .... 7 

III. Importance of International Criticism] 7 

IV. Grounds of International Amity . 9 
V. Vested Interests 11 

VI. Influence of Vested Interests . . 13 

VII. A Great Vested Interest — The Church 

of England 15 

VIII. Its Allies 16 

IX. Its Power and Characteristics . .17 

X. Whittier's Poem 20 

a 



CONTENTS 



PAGE- 
XL State and Free Religions Contrasted 22 

XII. Privilege in England . . . .23 

XIII. Instance of Power of Privilege— The 

Birmingham Sewage Bill ... 25, 

XIV. Another Instance of Combined In- 

fluence of Vested Interests and 
Privilege — The Education Act, 1870 27 

XV. A Third Instance : Trades-Union Legis- 
lation, The Criminal Law Amendment 
Act 31 

XVI. A Fourth Instance : The Working-Men 

and Parliamentary Representation . 33 

XVII. Effect of the Policy of Repression 35 

XVI 1 1. Republicanism in England . . .36 

XIX. System of Local Government . . 38- 

XX. The Parish Beadle 39> 

XXL Illustration of Confusion of Local 

Government 42 

XXII. System supported by the Strength of 

Vested Interest 43, 



CONTENTS xi 



PAGE 

XXIII. Tendency of Knaves and Fools to 

Municipal Government ... 45 

XXIV. The Fatal Results of Negligence 

of the Duties of Citizenship . . 46 

XXV. Patriotic Duty 49 

XXVI. Appeal 50 

XXVII. The English Poor . . . . 51 

XXVIII. The City and Town Population . . 53 

XXIX. The Agricultural Labourers . . 58 

XXX. Story of a Farm Labourer at Ludlow 60 

XXXI. The Poor Laws and Pauperism . 61 

XXXII. The Four Principal Perils of 

English Society 68 

XXXIII. First Danger : The Relation of the 

Working Man to Politics and 
Capital 69 

XXXIV. The Trades Unions . . . .71 

XXXV. The Battle between Capital and 

Labour 72 



xii CONTENTS 



PAGE 

XXXVI. Drink and Pauperism . . . .79 

XXXVII. The Fourth Danger : Deficiency 

of Incitements to Thrift . . 80 

XXXVIII. The Inherent Greatness and 
Strength of England indicated 
by the Steadiness of her Pro- 
gress in Reform . . . .86 

XXXIX. Reform in England is slow and 

STEADY 90 



Glances at Inner England. 



OUTER ENGLAND. 

Oy the crowds of Americans who land at 0uter 
Liverpool, and overrun the little island they 
threaten some day to annex, few can claim 
to have seen what I am going to disclose to 
you of the England of to-day. 

They of course remark a good deal that 
is curious, a good deal that is odd, a good 
deal that is splendid, a good deal that is 
squalid ; they will form no mean ideas of the 
strength, the wealth, the glory of Britain. 

Glancing from car or carriage window 
over a landscape which seems to eyes 
accustomed to the grand proportions of New 
World scenery to be exquisitely dwarfed, 



2 , GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

bright with strangely-vivid green, ranged in 
mosaics of variously coloured earth and crops 
parcelled out in charming diversities of shape 
into what appear to be little garden fields — its 
trees and plantations studded over hill and dale 
with a natural skill or by a most artistic 
chance, the traveller regards the picturesque 
and romantic aspects of England. Here a 
ruin, that mayhap of Rievaulx Abbey, lying 
in some verdant vale, embosomed in richly- 
wooded hills, with its unroofed aisles and 
nave and choir, its crumbling towers, the long 
ranges of its clustered columns and bended 
arches, the straggling remnants of its once 
elaborate cloisters, while over all, here and 
there, the solemn, slow-sprent ivy crowns with 
eternalising chaplets the worn-out glory of 
monasticism : there a castle, like that of 
Ludlow, the ancient stronghold of the Lords 
of the Marches, towering over delicious vales — 
typical together of manly strength and feminine 
beauty — recalling a tyranny and a chivalry to- 
gether and for ever gone : the mind, as one 
stands there reviewing the long historic, literary, 
and political memories of those grey stones, fall- 



OUTER ENGLAND. 



ing into a sweet confusion of romantic visions, 
and revelling amid the combined influences 
of nature and of fancy. Or, there again, some 
noble Hall — like Castle Howard, or Chats- 
worth, or Trentham — homes for princes, the 
product of an intermediate era of classical 
taste, with broad grand wings and rich facade, 
its porches and colonnades flashing to view 
amid scenes of sylvan loveliness so fair, so 
Eden-like, as to transport the soul with an 
unwicked envy of those who can command 
and enjoy such beauties this side heaven, 
and with wonder at the wealth of a nation so 
many of whose nobles can dwell in royal 
palaces. Or here, once more, is a village, the 
first foundations of whose humble homes were 
laid a thousand years ago, dozing in some 
bowery hollow, with weather-tinted cottages, 
all thatched and gabled and dormered in quaint 
angles and slopes, its dilapidated windmill, its 
yew-decked churchyard, and the Gothic tower 
or spire that peeps above the ancient trees. 
In these and a thousand other such scenes 
may you look upon merry England and yet 

*B 2 



4 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

not see what I would have you see of the 

England of to-day. 

Or here, presto, with a sudden whirl — the 

scene changes — 

Tower'd cities please us then, 
And the busy hum of men. 

Here are great towns, composite of old 
and new, with their huge factory barracks of 
brick and stone, their tall chimneys vomiting 
the smoke which overshadows the life beneath, 
with dingy, crowded homes, where every 
dweller and every room suggests a new 
problem of society : with roaring furnaces at 
which smudgy men perform feats Enceladan 
with iron and flame, and humanity wrapped 
in primitive dirt asserts its mastery over 
matter. And here again, vast docks and 
rivers, ringing with the clang of iron and 
steel, or forested for miles with masts, and 
huge warehouses storing up the riches of a 
hundred lands. Here indeed is there an 
England vast, strange, unequalled, displaying 
in old age an energy of development that 
rivals that of the New World ; but not here 
would I have you study with me the England 



OUTER ENGLAND. 



of to-day. Or the traveller may review the 
religious and philanthropic institutions of 
England. He finds the tokens of a re- 
ligious zeal and of a benevolent activity or- 
ganised, unceasing, universal. In confusing 
successions of vast assemblies at Exeter 
Hall or elsewhere he may do more than 
mark the absurdities of religion and the 
follies of religious bigotry ; he may learn 
much not only of earnest work, but of the 
circumstances which call these institutions 
into action. Moreover, he may con the 
newspapers, listen to parliamentary debates, 
frequent the clubs, mingle in the brilliant 
society of. Belgravia or Mayfair, pass weeks 
in enjoying the aristocratic pleasures of 
country mansions, and thus see English eccle- 
siasticism, politics, and society in their most 
striking aspects. 

Yet, with all this, you may and in most 
instances do, return without an inkling, at 
best with only hints, of that wonderful 
cosmos, with its underlying principles of life 
and action, its secret springs of policy, its 

social conditions and relations, its problems 
*b 3 



6 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

of government and society, its prospects, 
contingencies, and perils, which indeed con- 
stitute my topic this evening. 

Not that all is hidden. The traveller 
least curious gets glimpses of deeper things. 
He often observes, for instance, in the midst 
of rural districts, groups of handsome build- 
ings ; or, walking in London some winter 
evening, passes a great institution, at the door 
of which lingers a line of shivering men and 
women, ay ! and God help us ! children. 
And he is told that these are the palaces of 
the poor ; the poor-houses of a wealthy and 
too wide-spread national bounty. His mind 
takes in some ideas of one of the gravest 
questions ever given to a people to solve, 
and he shakes his head ruefully at this 
sudden revelation of a society where one in 
twenty of the population receives gratuitous 
relief at the expense of the remainder. But 
as we shall see directly, little can be appre- 
hended of all that is mixed up with that 
serious question, or conceive how its roots 
run out and into almost every other social 
and political condition. 



DEFINITION OF SUBJECT. 7 

II. 

DEFINITION OF SUBJECT. 

You will already then have divined that Definition 

of subject. 

in speaking of the England of to-day I refer 
to it, not in its picturesque or its romantic 
aspects, not in its commercial or statistical 
phases, not in relation to its power, its wealth, 
its amazing energy and progress — these are 
obvious to every one of my audience, — but of 
things which in any nation lend to all those 
aspects their real importance, things of its 
inner life and polity and social condition. 



III. 

IMPORTANCE OF INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM] 

I have not come here simply to amuse import- 

T 1 1 1 . - ance of in- 

you. 1 could not nave come to you without temationai 

criticism. 

a certain mission. What I am most anxious 
to do is, as far as may be in a brief evening, 
to give to Americans a better notion of the 
hidden meaning of some of those phases of 



8 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

English politics and society of which they 
read the superficial history in telegrams, and 
newspaper items, or magazine articles. 

How important is it, nay, let me say 
how imperative, that in these inner matters 
of national life, England should be known 
to Americans, America be understood 
of Englishmen ! The world is becoming 
daily more international. The problems of 
humanity reassert themselves in all states, in 
every relation, and the secret motives of a 
nation's life are among the most precious of 
the curiosities which it can expose to the gaze 
of a curious world. 

But I say, by all means let these things 
be honestly and profoundly elicited. For 
such matters your brilliant criticasters are 
but the crackling of thorns under a pot. 
Take your English novelist, satirist, publicist, 
who scurries from New York to New 
Orleans. He takes up his graphic pen and 
sketches the surface of a great republic. See 
him examine people and scenery with the 
same eye-glass and with the same brains. He 
jots down its. most obvious characteristics and 



INTERNATIONAL CRITICISM 



chronicles its petty details of life with an air 
of profound insight ; pokes a finger into its 
deepest social abysses, and measures its poli- 
tical strata by his umbrella. Can he describe 
for you the America of to-day ? Like a 
child at a panorama he may have looked 
upon the illuminated screen where the 
hidden painting and light and lens have 
thrown their shadows and reflections, but 
of the causes of the scene he looks upon 
or of the philosophy of its action, heat best 
only guesses. How much you Americans 
have suffered in this way at the hands of my 
roving countrymen I blush to confess, but it 
is some relief to know that it has not always 
been without compensating injuries. 



IV. 

GROUNDS OF INTERNATIONAL AMITY. 

In compliment to your common sense I Grounds 
avoid the hackneyed sentiments about the national 
eternal ties which bind England and America. 
England and America are two human nations, 



IO GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

and would go to war with as much zest, and 
perhaps ferocity, as any two nations in the 
world. That sort of sentiment has been 
overdone ; and when one of my countrymen 
vapours to you about our common race, 
common language, common Shakespeare, 
Milton, Byron, W. Field, and Holloway's 
pills, you may be sure he either has nothing 
to say, or is over here collecting for some 
church or charity. Ladies and gentlemen, 
our international brotherhood is to be evinced 
by better things than these : by a candid 
study of each others social errors or improve- 
ments : by a candid interchange of thought : 
by a candid, sincere, bold, and reciprocal criti- 
cism of each others societies, literature, poli- 
tics, religion : by the suppression of jealousies 
and heartburnings : by a more intimate 
knowledge on either part of all those count- 
less varieties of circumstance which tend to 
prove, not that our language but our in- 
terests are one. It is in this spirit that I 
have come among you, not to expose or con- 
demn my own country, but frankly to speak 
of such things in my own country as may be 
of consequence to you, or may enable you 



INTERNATIONAL AMITY. II 



the better to understand its difficulties as well 
as its greatness. 



V. 

VESTED INTERESTS. 



Where is one to begin upon a subject of so vested 

interests 

vast a range ? Here you have many prob- 
lems—there there are hundreds. Politics 
here have their knotty points, there they 
are tangled in innumerable skeins. The 
diversities of sects, the antipathies of reli- 
gions, the incongruities of class interests, are 
here grave and embarrassing — there they 
are numberless, extreme, irritable, irreconcil- 
able. Sociology is here beginning to be a well 
of profound depth — there it is a bottomless 
whirlpool. The evils and wrongs of society 
are here enough to make men anxious — there 
they force themselves upon every intelligence, 
and what is to some people more important, 
carry their interest home to every breeches 
pocket — wJtere there is one. Institutions here 
are many, and their relations vast — there 
they have multiplied through centuries, con- 
sist of the accretions of ages, and are built 



12 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

into the very framework of society. Interests 
like these you touch at your peril. They 
have arms and suckers as numerous and 
powerful as a devil-fish. They cling to the 
rock of their rights like limpets. When you 
tear them away you must break off large 
sections of their base with them. 

Here, then, is suggested our first topic. 
A prominent thing which stands out in the > 
condition of the England of to-day is the 
number and power of vested interests. 
The Crown has vested interests — the 
aristocracy have vested interests — the 
Church has vested interests — the clergy 
— the liquor-sellers — the army and navy — 
the bench and the bar — officials of the court, 
of law — every endowed charity — the schools, 
and many schoolmasters, railways, turnpikes, 
municipal corporations, lords of manors, 
dukes and chancellors of duchies, markets, 
fairs, constitute a vast and mighty array of 
vested interests. You can scarcely drive the 
chariot of legislation in any direction without 
jarring against one of these obstructive in- 
terests. 



INFLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS. 1 3 

VI. 

INFLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS. 

Hence Reform in England, and among influence 

of vested. 

yourselves, however similar it may be in interests. 
principles, is in development a different thing. 
In new communities anomalies in laws, in cus- 
toms, in polity, vanish before reformers like 
clouds before the wind. In old societies they 
can only be removed under the threat of 
danger, as you blow up houses to stay a great 
conflagration, or by the slow incessant wear- 
ing of advancing and receding tides of public 
opinion. 

Aye ! great is the potency of vested 
interest ! It is a solid body concreted into 
the wall of society, and you can only remove 
it by breaking down that on which it is stayed. 
It cannot be abated without noise, and labour, 
and money ; a solvent people are least and 
last willing to apply to it. Its impudence is 
astounding, its claims exorbitant, its obstinacy 
selfish and intractable. 

In proportion to the number of vested 



14 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

interests existing in a country, with all their 
permanent establishments, connections, rights, 
privileges, and immunities, is that country- 
fettered and locked up from freedom of action, 
is the majority of its people restrained by the 
privileges of a minority, is the liberty of that 
country, its advancement, the healthiness and 
purity of its political life, imperilled. 

A vested interest is a millstone hanged 
about the neck of society. Like Sinbad's old 
man, it clings round the shoulders of a nation 
with an ever- tightening grasp. It does not 
much matter whether its legs are clerical, or 
aristocratic, or plebeian— whether they wear 
the livery of the monarch, or the boots of the 
dragoon, or the silk-stockings of a bishop, or 
the fleshes of an alderman, or the naturals of 
a sans-culotte — their grip is none the less 
strong and deadly — it impedes both breath 
and motion. 

Such interests must to some extent exist 
wherever there are human societies, but the 
aim of wise statesmen and a wise people will 
be to keep or reduce them to the smallest 
number and lowest power. Laws which en- 



THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. I 5 



•courage their creation are impolitic, laws which 
exaggerate their power are criminal. 



VII. 



A GREAT VESTED INTEREST— THE CHURCH 
OF ENGLAND. 

Most prominent at this moment of all these a great 

vested in- 
great interests in England is the Established terest— 

the Church 

Church ; endowed with 90,000,000/. of pro- of Eng- 
land. 
perty ; its bishops sitting in the House of 

Peers ; its clergy of every grade scattered over 
the country, prescribing in rural districts, with 
few exceptions, the religion of the people, 
preponderating also in the towns ; its minis- 
ters — and only its ministers — tx officio regis- 
trars of marriages, and managers of endowed 
schools ; its burial-grounds (those of the parish 
and therefore of the parish people) closed to 
all services but those of its rubric ; its schools 
the principal media of education in England. 
This is a church not only wealthy and politi- 
cally powerful, but socially preeminent, not to 
belong to which is a disability. 



1 6 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



VIII. 

ITS ALLIES. 

its allies. This mighty institution, holding in its 

hands the keys of heaven and hell, wields in 
England to-day a power rivalled only by that 
of its strange ally, the Licensed Victuallers' 
Association. For in this crisis of their fates > 
the clergy and the publicans no longer stand 
afar off from each other. They have joined 
hands ; and four elections out of five are won 
by the unholy combination. It is character- 
istic of such an institution to have no con- 
science about its allies. It was more than 
two centuries ago the aider and abettor of a 
tyrannical monarchy. From it were cruelly 
driven the noblest elements it contained, and 
some of its cast-off members laid the founda- 
tions of one of the greatest nations in the 
world. Through its whole history it has been 
on the side of privilege against equality — of 
patronage against liberty — of power against 
right — of caste and priesthood against libera- 
tion. 



THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. I 7 

IX. 

ITS POWER AND CHARACTERISTICS. 

I ts patent incongruity with the ideas of its power 
this age and its inherent defects had shaken its character 

istics. 

foundations. But as a last effort, and true to 
its instincts, it has by taking advantage of a 
combination of circumstances, succeeded in 
procuring legislation in England which vir- 
tually throws into its hands the education of 
a majority of English children, with additional 
endowments. 

The pretensions and privileges of this 
vast organisation complicate almost every 
social problem — obstruct almost every social 
reform. Its influence is divisive of Chris- 
tianity, through the arrogance of its claims 
and the assumption of its clerics. So long as 
its supremacy lasts religious equality is im- 
possible and religious bigotry is a national 
characteristic. It is a conglomerate of irre- 
concilables. Within are fightings, without 
are fears. The representatives of free thought, 
of Calvinism, of Ritualism, alike find nests 



1 8 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

under the eaves of its churches and cathe- 
drals. 

The neologian, the disciple of the reli- 
gion of culture if it has any disciple, the 
Evangelical, the Ritualist, may alike feed 
within its fold. Its livings are bought and 
sold by Simoniacal contracts. The Ritualists 
have lately been rejoicing because they suc- 
ceeded in purchasing the oversight of a piece 
of Christ's fold in Liverpool, of rather larger 
size and with sheep of somewhat better breed 
than usual. Who ever expected to see 
Christ's kingdom cut up into lots and disposed 
of to the highest-bidding adventurers of 
religious joint-stock companies with limited 
liability ? 

But this is not all. In many places the 
rector or vicar is also a magistrate, and (as 
clerics love power) an active magistrate ; so 
that he who preaches in Christ's name on the 
Sabbath, and is to soothe the pillow of dying 
parishioners, administers on week days the 
criminal law, sends poachers to be tried at 
the assizes, and convicts agricultural unionists, 
be they men or women, under Acts passed in 



THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND. IQ 



the interest of employers of labour. Hence 
the poor labourers who hear at church that 
all men are equal before God, must, at the 
bench of magistrates, learn from the same 
lips that the laws of England have introduced 
important amendments to the Sermon on the 
Mount in favour of land and money. 

But you will say, ' Such a body as that 
must be on the eve of dissolution!' No. 
One bond unites the incongruous elements ; 
vested interest — more irreverently designated 
loaves and fishes. 

How great is the religious discord pro- 
moted by this gigantic anomaly, who can 
describe ? It must be seen and endured to 
be understood in all its bearings. An 
Established Church minister will not enter a 
nonconformist pulpit — a nonconformist minis- 
ter must not enter a church desk. In the 
country parishes the church clergyman and 
his flock look with disdain on the dissenting 
minister and his congregation. It needs 
indeed some strength of mind to be a dis- 
senter in the rural districts, because it implies 
ostracism from the best society. The rich 

c 2 



20 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

man's child, the poor mans child, will alike 
suffer from a Christianity which is vindictive 
or a charity which is sectarian. 

Why do I mention these things ? — to amuse 
yotCy or to derogate from your admiration of 
episcopacy, or to discount my native land ? 
I should scorn to minister anything to sec- 
tarian rancour, or to vilify my own country 
to strangers. I am speaking to you of a 
political institution, of a Church in the meshes 
of the State. I refer to these things only 
that you may have an idea of the influence 
exerted in English politics and society by a 
gigantic vested interest which from end to 
end of England prompts and fosters un- 
christian enmity, bigotry, and strife. 



X. 

WHITTIER'S POEM. 



Whittled Your poet Whittier has prophesied in 

noble numbers against the hierarchs of such 
an institution. 



WHITTIEKS POEM. 21 



Now too oft the priesthood wait 
At the threshold of the state ; 
Waiting for the beck and nod 
Of its power as law and God. 

Not on them the poor rely, 

Not to them looks liberty, 

Who, with fawning falsehood, cower 

To the wrong when clothed with power. 

Oh ! to see them meanly cling 
Round the master, round the king, 
Sported with, and sold and bought, 
Pitifuller sight is not ! 

Tell me not that this must be, 
God's true priest is always free ! 
Free the needed truth to speak, 
Right the wronged and raise the weak. 

Not to fawn on wealth and state, 
Leaving Lazarus at the gate. 
Not to peddle creeds like wares, 
Not to mutter hireling prayers. 

Not to print the new life's bliss 
On the sable ground of this, 
Golden streets for idle knave, 
Sabbath rest for weary slave ! 

Not for words and works like these, 
Priest of God, thy mission is, 
But to make earth's desert glad, 
In its Eden greenness clad. 



2 2 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

And to level manhood bring 
Lord and peasant, serf and king; 
And the Christ of God to find 
In the humblest of thy kind. 



XI. 

STATE AND FREE RELIGIONS CONTRASTED. 

state and Yet in the face of these things there are 

Free re- . 

ligions men, and able men, who argue in favour of a 

contrasted. 

state religion. The Bismarckian principle 
has been ably propounded in England, and 
the right of the state to control the faiths 
taught in it has been supported by arguments 
that would have justified the Inquisition. 
Even among yourselves have arisen people 
to assert that the legislature ought to enact 
the existence of a God. I have often thought 
that the God whose name is not mentioned 
in the American constitution is more revered 
by the American people than is in England 
the God who shares with her Majesty the 
Queen the headship of the Church. I may 
be wrong, but my own observation is that 
religion is here more earnest, more vivid* 



STATE AND FREE RELIGIONS. 2$ 

more energetic and sacrificing and less sec- 
tarian, than in any other Anglo-Saxon com- 
munity, and I attribute it to the perfect level 
of religious status and to the absence of what 
is termed the patronage of government. 



XII. 

PRIVILEGE IN ENGLAND. 

Such then is the nature of vested interests, privilege 
I have said enough to warn you to be jealous land. & 
of their establishment and growth among 
you. They are silent and secret in their 
increase. 

Crescit occulta, velut arbor sevo. 

Strong I say, in an old country, is vested 
interest ; great also is the power of privilege. 
Privilege in Germany controls governments, 
rules society, commands the army, suppresses 
the people ; and in that very Germany now 
so preeminent, privilege, waxing unendurable, 
will yet be dethroned by a liberal revolution. 

* But,' you say, ' what of privilege in 



24 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

England ? Have not Reform Bills done 
much to diminish its power ? ' Something ; 
but still not enough. The present House of 
Commons, elected five years ago, is nearly as 
much the representative of land, capital, and 
aristocracy as the last. Privilege tells at 
every point — often I believe unconsciously. 
For in one thing is England supereminent — 
in one thing to be envied by all other nations ; 
I mean in the general ability and purity of 
her statesmen. No one ever dreams of im- 
puting to an English statesman of eminence 
any corruption, anything worse than party 
or class prejudice. Therein you look for 
their weaknesses ; and I have never heard it 
gravely suggested in my time that there was 
a member of the House of Commons to be 
bought with money. How vast and blessed an 
influence on English society is exerted by the 
high personal character of her great statesmen, 
you cannot overestimate. Yet, as I said, privi- 
lege is mighty. No ministry can be formed 
without a preponderating representation of the 
aristocratic party. Sons of peers or Whig 
land-owners have, in a Liberal government, the 



chances oi undci secretai j ships [n the 
army 01 na> \. admirabl} as the} ha> e 

nu\l. pi u ilege still wins appointments 

and promot Prh ilege reforms, 

, cial benefits, influences Parliament 

magisterial benches in the country, 

maintains unjust laws, discourages the un 



MIL 

i 

! et nic :> i\ e j ou an instance Bij ming fnatonec 

>' 1 !' ,,u ■ ' 

ham some tune a^o was sullenng in a gnastlj oi Prwi 
waj From bad drainage rhe to^ n count il ile uii 

mtngh nu 

coded in car rvinir throucfh the ( lommittee 

Bill 
ol the i ords and ( Commons r Bewage bill, at 

i oi rhis bill proposed to 

the sewage oi the town on land 

lying near the property ol Sii Charles 

Adderlej and Sii Robert Peel. But tin 

itlemen, though one ol them professed u» 

be a sanitai \ i efoi mer, would ha\ e no sev aj 



26 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

between the wind and their nobility, and 
though it had been proved to the satisfaction 
of the two Committees that the proposed 
scheme would create no nuisance near their 
property, they collected enough friends and 
landowners to throw the bill out of the House 
of Commons on the third reading. The 
people of Birmingham lost their 20,000/. r 
and its enormous population went on gene- 
rating disease. The case was aggravated by 
this fact : the minority in the division in the 
House of Commons on the Birmingham 
Sewage Bill represented more voters than 
the majority. 

We still retain those relics of a barbarous 
era of statesmanship, unequal constituencies, 
and ten of the smallest towns in Great Britain 
may outvote ten of the largest. This is one 
of the incidents of privilege, as it also gives 
it additional power. 



THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 27 



XIV. 

ANOTHER INSTANCE OF COMBINED IN- 
FLUENCE OF VESTED INTERESTS AND 
PRIVILEGE— THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 

Again, the National education originated Another 

instance of 

by Lord John Russell and his coadjutors combined 

y influence 

slowly pushed its way for thirty years through p fvested 

J r J J J & interests 

all the difficulties created by the indifference f nd P ri ™" 

J lege : the 

of the people, by sectarian animosity, by the Aero? 10 " 1 
assumption of the Established Church, by l87 °* 
the arrogance of Roman Catholic pretensions, 
as to the education of citizens who belong 
first to the state and then to their churches — 
pretensions, let me add, which, as we in 
England have learned to our cost, no people 
can listen to without peril, or concede without 
derogating from its liberties. Government 
endeavoured for years to secure a national 
education by voluntary effort aided by the 
state. Thus there grew up a great group of 
vested interests — the denominational schools, 
most of them belonging to the Church or to 
the Romanists. They failed, however, to 



2% GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

penetrate the dense mass of ignorance ; and 
under the pressure of terrible facts we resolved 
to take a step forward. The Education Act 
of 1870 recognised the duty of the state to 
see that no child should grow up without the 
opportunity of a good education. It post- 
poned the recognition of the complementary 
principle that every child should be compelled 
to take advantage of that opportunity. The 
Act also enacted that no part of England 
and Wales should be deficient in school 
accommodation ; it did not, by making the 
education everywhere rate-supported and 
free, make it a right purchased by the whole 
community, common to every child in the 
community, and therefore to be enjoyed 
without stint or reproach. One step more 
was required to make the system perfect. 

The education given by the state should 
be given under state inspection — it should be 
secular only — its expenses should be subject 
to the control of a body elected by the rate- 
payers. The moment you omit any modi- 
fication of these principles, you let loose in 
the community the dogs of religious war, 



THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 29 

and have given away the guarantees of an 
efficient and economical education. In Eng- 
land the blunder was committed. The 
Churches of England and Rome, the aristo- 
cratic and landed interests, proved too strong 
for those who were in favour of religious 
equality. Denominational schools, belonging 
chiefly to those two bodies, were perpetuated 
under a state system. Six months was 
given, with the bribe of additional aid from 
the state, to increase the number of deno- 
minational schools in the parishes, until the 
accommodation should be sufficient for all 
the children in the parish, and thus secure 
exclusive ascendancy to one sect. School 
boards elected by ratepayers, and empowered 
to levy local rates for education, were only to 
be formed where there were not enough 
denominational schools to accommodate all 
the children. The denominational schools 
were to receive for the children they taught 
a certain grant from the imperial govern- 
ment ; and school boards, where there were 
any, were empowered to pay, at denomina- 
tional schools which the parents might 



30 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

designate, the fees of the children of paupers 
who had religious prejudices — that is to say, 
I may be forced to pay a rate which goes to 
support a school in which are taught doctrines 
I abhor. 

In consequence of these wicked and 
pernicious blunders, while hundreds of 
thousands of children are waiting to be 
educated, England is a battle-field of religious 
bigotry. In elections for school boards, the 
question is not how many men of experience 
in educational matters shall be elected, but 
how many representatives of each sort shall 
sit upon the board and give it a secular or a 
denominational leaning. 

Those natural allies of Liberalism, the 
Nonconformists, seeing in this policy an 
unfair advantage conferred on the Estab- 
lishment and on Romanism, are either hostile 
or cold to a government which has been 
false to its principles. In that old country, 
with its overpowering State Church, compro- 
mises, which here are possible, are impracti- 
cable ; the power of the ^compromising is 
great indeed ; religious bigotry, exasperated 



THE EDUCATION ACT, 1870. 



by ever-obtrusive social and political inequal- 
ities, will neither be generous nor tolerant, 
and the only smooth platform of state action 
is absolute equality. 



XV. 

A THIRD INSTANCE: TRADES-UNION LEGIS- 
LATION, THE CRIMINAL LAW AMEND- 
MENT ACT. 

Let me cite a third instance. These con- a third in- 

•i • • stance : 

crete exhibits of the truth I am stating are Trades- 
Union 
far more instructive than any arguments. legislation; 

J & the Crimi- 

Some time ago the trades-unions applied nal Law 

fe rr Amend- 

tO Parliament for relief from the abominable ment Act - 

laws which rendered their associations illegal, 

and which deprived them of any remedy in a 

court of law for the defalcations of their 

officers. Parliament passed a milk-and-water 

permissive measure, because just then the 

working-men were important to the Liberal 

party : but at the same time privilege stepped 

in and demanded its securities. The Act 

was supplemented by an Act called the 

1 Criminal Law Amendment Act,' and which 



32 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

defined special misdemeanours supposed 
to be peculiar to trades-unionists, with 
special penalties for the commission of them. 
This was a case of class-legislation. The 
ordinary criminal law, which protects all the 
rest of the community, so far as it is possible 
to protect it, from infringements of personal 
liberty of thought or action, but which cannot 
possibly protect every individual from the 
thousand moral influences which his fellows 
may bring to bear on him, provides penalties 
for threatening or molesting people ; and, 
moreover, it is as unfair as it is impolitic to 
define crimes as class crimes and to punish 
them as class offences. True, the Criminal 
Law Amendment Act was separated from 
the Trades- Union Act, and thus in name 
appears as a simple amendment of the 
general criminal law, but both its origin 
and its terms stand forth to brand it as a 
gross instance of special legislation, aimed at 
and affecting in almost all its particulars only 
one portion of the community. Ever since 
that time the Act has been working with 
increasing hardships. It is purposely indefi- 



CRIMINAL LAW AMENDMENT ACT. 33 

nite — no one can tell whether some word or 
act may not bring him within the clutches of 
some prejudiced Tory magistrate or judge. 
You will remember that two clerical justices 
in Oxfordshire sent nineteen women to prison 
under this Act, some of them with infants at 
their breasts, for frightening a couple of men. 



XVI. 

A FOURTH INSTANCE: THE WORKING-MEN 
AND PARLIAMENTARY REPRESENTA- 
TION. 

Once more : since the Reform Act, the a fourth 

. . , , A instance: 

working-men have been attempting to secure the work- 

1 i • n 1 * n S men 

for themselves that influence in legislation, and Par- 

. . liamenlaiy 

and that opportunity of expressing their Represen- 
tation, 
opinions in Parliament, which the measure 

was designed to afford them. 

The principle of class representation is 

not a sound one — it is obviously prone to 

exaggerate class-prejudices and to create 

representatives less useful to the community 

than diligent in promoting class interests at 

D 



34 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

the expense of the common good. But in 
England no honest observer can conceal from 
himself that there is class legislation promoted 
for the classes in power, and sometimes 
adversely to the working-men. In that situa- 
tion the only method of adjusting the balance 
and preparing the way for equal, proper and 
unprejudiced representation is to place in the 
House men who can speak, and speak 
authoritatively, the wishes of the working- 
class. But here privilege stands out once 
more. The present Liberal party, with Mr. 
Gladstone at its head, was practically placed 
in power by the votes of working-men, but 
even a Liberal government shrinks from 
meeting in the House of Commons the repre- 
sentatives of labour. 

In most of the constituencies the privi- 
leged classes, however liberal in their profes- 
sions, would scarcely look at, still less assist 
a labour candidate ; and in those where the 
preponderance of voters has been on the side 
of the working-men, the Liberal whip has 
jockeyed their candidates out of the seat with 
admirable and invariable cleverness. In fact 



WORKING-MEN IN PARLIAMENT. 35 

I suppose the ministry dared not express any 
sympathy for the claims of their most 
numerous supporters. The reaction among 
the upper classes in England after the Hyde 
Park riot was very strong ; the effect on the 
English middle classes of the horrible days of 
the Paris Commune was naturally extreme ; 
the working-men are cleverly and persistently 
associated by the Whig and Tory press with 
the acts or expressions of a handful of Inter- 
nationalists in London and of a few Repub- 
lican agitators. On every question affecting 
the working-men, the present Government 
and House of Commons have leaned to the 
side of privilege and capital. 



XVII. 

EFFECT OF THE POLICY OF REPRESSION. 

You will always find that where men seek Effect of 

. the poliey 

to repress powers that ought to be recognised, of repres- 
sion, 
they exasperate those powers to dangerous 

development. 

This has been the effect of the arrogance 

D 2 



-\6 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



o 



cf privilege in England. You get glimpses 
of the revolt in the almost universal oppo- 
sition of the working-men to royal dowries — 
in their doubtful attitude towards the Queen 
—in their angry criticism of every act like 
the reduction of the number of artisans em- 
ployed in the naval dockyards, while the 
sinecures, and offices nearly equivalent to 
sinecures, are left untouched — in their wide- 
spread suspicion of Mr. Gladstones ministry 
and in the significant though not alarming 
progress of republicanism. 



XVIII. 

REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 
Repubii- The republican movement in England and 

canism in ~ , , . . r 

Engknd. Scotland is important, but not at present for- 
midable. Yet I think it may be made so by 
the obstinate folly of Tory and Whig ob- 
structives, and at any crisis of the national 
affairs. Mr. Bradlaugh, its principal leader, 
is an able man and has a large following. 
In one or two towns, I am informed, the 



REPUBLICANISM IN ENGLAND. 37 

Republicans are strong enough to control the 
elections. There are about 100 Republican 
clubs, 1 but they are not, as I understand, 
combined in one league. As a rule they 
associate their aims with the principles of the 
' International ' and the atheism of Mr. Brad- 
laugh. These clubs appear to me to be here 
and there ingeniously mixed up with the 
socialist schemes of single-eyed agitators, 
and naturally take their stand alongside the 
workman in the paramount cause of labour 
against capital. I know a good deal of the 
working-classes in the great towns, and I 
cannot conceal from myself or you, that they 
are in a temper to accept what I deem the 
fatal seeds of propagandism which threatens 
alike religion and government. To anyone 
who attentively considers the position of 
England with a desire for her welfare, this 
movement can have only the aspect of mis- 
chief and folly. Republicanism here is yet 
on its trial : Republicanism in many of its 

1 Mr. Bradlaugh, in his speeches in the United 
States, claimed more, and he probably knows best, but I 
had the above number from an authority scarcely second 
to Mr. Bradlaugh. 



o 



8 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



best features already exists in England. The 
Queen is less powerful than your President ; 
our ministry is more amenable to public 
opinion than yours. In face of the vast evils 
that yet remain to be redressed, and with 
ample machinery provided for their safe, 
steady, and certain removal, it seems almost 
criminal to divert men from practical to 
theoretical agitation, to upset their views of 
a form of government which, with all its 
faults, is the best in the world ; especially at 
a time when there are better things for the 
noblest reformers to do. 

But this movement proves how the per- 
versity and blindness of wealth and privilege 
may push to extremities and combine into 
formidable resistance, forces which a higher 
wisdom would charm into utility. 



XIX. 

SYSTEM OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT". 

System of Next to our vested interests and all-pervad- 

Local 

Govern- ing privilege, the most noteworthy thing to a 

merit. 



LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 39 

foreigner in England would be our system of 
local government. Cromwell called the laws 
of England ' an ungodly jungle ; ' this system 
is not to be so easily epitomised. A coat of 
many colours, of patchwork, of darning, 
botching and mending — good heavens, 'tis 
the very motley of Bumbledom ! 

There are vestries and boards of guard- 
ians in some places ; mayors and corpora- 
tions in others ; in others local government 
boards ; in others boards of health ; county 
magistrates do some things — parish beadles 
do others, and the spirit of the parish beadle 
is the spirit of local government. 



XX. 

THE PARISH BEADLE. 



Great is the parish beadle. His dignity is The 

parish 

a paltry one — it is the mere dignity of a beadle. 
livery — yet he loveth to display it with the 
air of one in a prince's clothing. He (ad- 
ministering only a parish) nevertheless deem- 
eth himself capable of any office. To him 



40 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

the beadle's gown is the chief qualification, 
the outward and visible sign of the inward 
and spiritual grace of government. 

' I should become an earldom rarely,' said 
Sancho, ' for I was once beadle to a brother- 
hood, and the beadle's gown did so become 
me that everyone said I had the presence of 
a warden. Then how do you think I shall 
look with a duke's robes on my back, all 
bedaubed with gold or pearl like any foreign 
count ? I believe we shall have folks come 
a hundred leagues to see me ! ' 

So the beadle worshippeth office — 
wrappeth himself round with office and its 
badges — accounteth that his office was made 
for him and he for his office. To him his 
parish is the world. The beadle loveth to 
show his power ; before him little boys 
tremble, and old women bow down them- 
selves. The weak look in vain to him for 
help or mercy ; to the strong he showeth 
respect. He fawneth upon the great, and by 
humility he winneth many favours — and 
many kicks. He is willing to sacrifice any- 
thing for his office and himself; even his 



THE PARISH BEADLE. 41 

wife, his family, his wife's relations, his 
honour, his honesty — all these things are to 
him as nought weighed in the balances 
against the ennobling garb of office. Office 
makes him. Without office he is John Smith 
or Ezekiel Jones, of anywhere — in office he 
is the Beadle of Bellyfillin. He will take 
any oath of allegiance you please, an it will 
procure him an office ; he will break any oath 
you like, if it will preserve him the dignity 
and the emoluments. Moreover he conflneth 
himself not to one place. He goeth about, 
seeking where and what he may devour, He 
getteth into Parliaments, or Senates, or State- 
legislatures, he riseth to be cabinet minister, 
he may even become Prime Minister or First 
President, or Governor, but everywhere and 
always he carrieth with him the spirit of the 
beadle. Like Sancho, you may swear of him 
that his gown may improve with every change, 
but yet the two-legged beast within, and the 
spirit within the two-legged beast, will be 
still and always that of the parish beadle. 



42 



GLAACES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



XXI. 



Illustra- 
tion of 
confusion 
of local 
govern- 
ment. 



ILLUSTRATION OF CONFUSION OF LOCAL 
GOVERNMENT. 

To return to the confusion of our local 
government. If you will pardon the 
Hibernicism, the same places have different 
boundaries. The municipal boundary, the 
parliamentary boundary, the parish bound- 
aries, the sanitary boundary, of the same 
town are often not identical. What illustra- 
tion could do justice to such disorder ? 

Let me give a prescription. 

Take half-a-dozen dissected maps, each 
sawn in a different pattern ; distribute the 
pieces and mix them well together. Form a 
square of the size of one of them, and within 
that square casually arrange such pieces as 
come to hand first. If any spaces remain, 
fill them up as near as may be with smaller 
sections. Proceed to cover up its crevices 
with larger pieces, and if you don't, like the 
result go on piling one piece on another all 
over the map, in such a manner as to give 



CONFUSION OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 43 

the greatest possible varieties of disorder 
arranged in the least convenient way : fix the 
whole by pouring hot glue — which you may 
call prescription — over it, and you have a 
type of the manner in which England is laid 
out for purposes of local government. 

An astute and learned lawyer would be 
puzzled to discriminate between the multitude 
of Acts concerning local management of towns, 
of sanitary matters, of water supply, of roads, 
streets, and bridges, of building and draining, 
and to advise specifically what authority 
might or ought to do any particular thing. 
The judges sometimes give it up as hopeless. 



XXII. 



SYSTEM SUPPORTED BY THE STRENGTH 
OF VESTED INTEREST. 

But how comes it that a system so intoler- system 
able can hold its own in a community not abso- by P the ° 
lutely idiotic ? I reply it is because of the vested 1 
power of vested interests. The multitude of 
these bodies, with their ancient rights and 



44 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

privileges, are together too powerful for any 
government to attack except in detail or by a 
sidewind. Not long since, you will remember, 
Mr. Gladstone threw out a much-needed warn- 
ing to the Corporation of London. The whole 
bevy of Bumbledom went into hysterics. The 
Tory party sounded the trumpet. An ancient 
and honourable corporation was in danger. 
On the sacred persons of Gog and Magog 
impious hands might be laid. The Lord 
Mayor of London asked all the mayors in 
England to dinner. The chaplain said grace. 
Over turtle-soup and venison, chassded with 
champagne, they soothed their outraged 
spirits, they encouraged each other to believe 
that institutions so antique, so essential to the 
existence of the commonwealth, should never 
die : they pledged themselves to a new 
solemn League and Covenant in their defence. 
The oath was, or is, to be confirmed by a 
second dinner to be given by all the other 
mayors to the Lord Mayor of London. Even 
Mr. Gladstone, facing such a phalanx of 
embodied beef and dignity, equally intent 
on vindicating their corporate rights and cor- 



STRENGTH OF VESTED INTEREST. 45 

poral privileges, flinched before them at the 
Mansion House, and generalised upon the 
dignity of local independence. 



XXIII. 

TENDENCY OF KNAVES AND FOOLS TO 
MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENT 

I do not profess to know what your experi- Tendency 

of knaves 

ence is in America, but in England we find and fools 

to muni- 

that stupidity and knavery have a perilous ci P al 

x J J x govevn- 

tendency to aggregate and crystallise about ment - 
municipal institutions. It would seem as if 
an ingenuous public recognised town-corpora- 
tions and local boards as a substitute for re- 
spectable gaols and idiot asylums. Nay, 
what asylum could take them all in ? Paro- 
chus is deaf, Parochus is blind, Parochus is 
stupid, Parochus is perverse : Parochus is 
niggardly when he ought to be generous, and 
free when he ought to be close : Parochus 
sometimes pockets the people's money, uses 
the people's workmen, takes commissions 
from the people's tradesmen, forgets the 



46 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

people's health, neglects the people's business. 
If the cur is caught in the act of stealing a 
leg of mutton, he yelps when he is kicked 
for it, but he goes on eating the meat. 



XXIV. 

THE FATAL RESULTS OF NEGLIGENCE OF 
THE DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP. 

The fatal To a new community one cannot point a 

results of 

negligence better moral than from the state of municipal 

of the r 

duties of administration in England. There are few 

•citizenship. & 

evils so injurious to the body politic as ad- 
ministrative corruption existing through the 
negligence of citizens to perform their duties, 
whether of selection or representation. It 
is indeed one of the clearest evidences of 
rottenness in a people's condition. For it is 
with a nation as with a man ; sacrifice is the 
secret of greatness. He who would win a 
name, a position, an estate, builds these up 
on self-denial. From blood and tears comes 
triumph : the cross wins the crown. Away 
then I say, from among a free people, with 



DUTIES OF CITIZENSHIP. 47 

the craven to whom political and municipal 
affairs are things of mere curiosity, or the 
avaricious knave who while he accepts a 
nation's protection declines to repay it with a 
citizen's devoir. 

It is the inaction of the best citizens 
which disturbs in all free countries the play 
of free government. Government can only 
afford to be free, and a people can only 
deserve to be free, when citizens generally 
assume the common burden of working for 
its good. People cry out against the tyranny 
of majorities. High-stepping Tories cry out 
against it in the state, schismatics cry out 
against it in every free church. I dare say 
the man who suffers from the tyranny of 
majorities — that is, the man whose interests 
are not coincident with those of the public, 
finds it quite as hard to give way to a 
majority as it would be to yield to a pope 
or a kaiser. But after all (it is a mere truism 
to say it !) is it not a different thing to be 
one of a community, and have a voice either 
for or against what the majority desires, and 
to be one of a community every member of 



48 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

which is bound to submit silently to the 
dictation of one person ? Really, when we 
come to sift this outcry about the tyranny of 
majorities, we find it simply comes to this : 



Absti- The abstinence of influential minorities. 

nence of 11 i • • 1 

influential In a free state, were all the citizens to be 



minorities. 



equally patriotic in their interest, labour, and 
sacrifice for the political purity and perfection 
of government, the tyranny of majorities 
would scarcely be a bugbear. But as a 
matter of course, if half the people are indif- 
ferent, the other half will take advantage of 
it : if the best decline the work, the worst 
will accept it. And I have often noticed 
that the men who most decry the tyranny of 
majorities are those who keep themselves free 
of the sacrifices, toils, and responsibilities of 
political and municipal affairs. 

You know too well, as we in England 
have learned to our cost, the effects of this 
indifference. It is the common peril of 
democracies. Government, local or national, 
is apt to become the prey of state harpies. 
You find at length that, not the fittest man 



ABSTINENCE OF MINORITIES. 49 

but the most cunning demagogue or even 
the most egregious scoundrel, is the one who, 
taking the people by the ears, acquires the 
right to govern them. Instead of principle 
we get fraud ; instead of patriotism, selfish- 
ness ; instead of sacrifice, actual stealing ; 
instead of statesmanship, quackery ; and you 
remember Carlyle says that quack . and dupe 
are the upper and under sides of the same 
leather. 



XXV. 

PATRIOTIC DUTY. 



The sentiment of patriotic duty is one of Patriotic 
the things wherein we are nowadays most 
deficient. In the Greek Republics patriotic 
sacrifice was one of the virtues. Has Chris- 
tianity diminished the obligation ? Do we, 
and ought we not faithfully to teach our 
children that next to the love of God comes 
the spirit of devotion to the people's service ? 
The mere sentiment of Fourth of July loyalty ; 
the sprinkling and starring of heaven with fire- 



50 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

works, tremendous roaring and rattling of 
cannonades and fusillades, the assertion of 
American citizenship in divers curious ways, 
in places as different as London hotels, 
French cafes, Rhine steamers, the Roman 
Corso, or the top of the Pyramids ; eloquent 
and intensely national orations on the Decla- 
ration of Independence and the Pilgrim 
Fathers ; that any of these, or all of them 
together, do but imperfectly comply with the 
responsibilities of patriotism we must all 
confess. Not seldom are they the brayings 
of the well-stalled jackass, who prefers 
speaking through his nose to being harnessed 
in the yoke and taking his share in dragging 
along the great state chariot. 



XXVI. 

APPEAL. 



Appeal O ye mothers and fathers, with your 

noble, clever, capable children growing up 
around you — your circle of beauty and pride, 



APPEAL. 5 1 



if you would make of this free people a really 
great nation, supreme in its liberty, its wealth, 
and its might, instil into your offspring the 
true holy pride of a patriotism which regards 
no sacrifice as too extreme, no gift too rich, 
no energy or zeal too extravagant in the 
country's daily work. For here are laid the 
foundation of a nation's greatness, here grow 
the roots of its success, herein lie the seeds of 
its honour, its well-being, its super-eminence, 
its after-blessedness in the sacred consecra- 
tion to its service of all its sons and daughters ! 



XXVII. 

THE ENGLISH POOP. 



I have spoken of vested interests, of privi- The 

English 

lege, of local administration, of the citizen's poor. 
duty. Let us change the scene. 

The amazing vitality and wealth of Eng- 
land transfixes the foreigner with astonish- 
ment. Nothing more impressed the Shah of 
Persia than the tokens which he saw on every 



52 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

hand of boundless riches. The streets and 
squares of noble mansions in Belgravia, 
Mayfair, or Brompton, the innumerable halls 
and castles, with their splendid domains 
sprinkled over the face of the country, the 
magnificence of the merchants, the incessant 
vigour of manufactures, the crowded ship- 
ping on rivers like the Thames, the Mersey, 
the H umber, the Clyde, and the Tyne, as- 
tound the spectator with the idea of fabulous 
wealth, amidst which it would seem impossi- 
ble that poverty should have a place. Yet, 
with all this energy and all these riches, there 
exists in melancholy contrast a poverty and 
degradation so terrible that it is a greater 
marvel than the splendour under which it 
burrows. Up from the depths comes a cry 
sonorous and awful, a warning to the daz- 
zling glory above. 



CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 53 

XXVIII. 

THE CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 



Let me try then, — let me try faithfully and The city 

and town 



without exaggeration, to give you an insight popuia- 
into some of that dense, dreadful life which 
underlies the crust of English society. 

I stood, not many weeks ago, gazing at a The 

, . Midland 

magnificent pile of buildings at St. Pancras in Railway 

Station at 

London, erected on the plans of England's St. Pan- 
eras : the 
greatest architect, — one of those colossal antec&- 

dents and 

hotels which are now attached to our chief conse - 

quences. 

railway termini, with all its adjacent station, — 
a triumph of engineering, its vast roof, if I 
am not mistaken, spanning in one arch more 
than an acre of ground. Where all this now 
stands, and on the space cleared for its ap- 
proaches, I used eight years ago to visit, 
week after week, a population of the artisan 
and unskilled labouring class. Here were 
narrow streets and alleys, with grim, rotting 
tenements, every hole and corner, from cellar 
to attic, occupied by families — one family to 
a room, with sometimes a boarder besides — 



54 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

the population so dense that we counted in 
one square 4,500 people, — on each corner a 
ginshop doing a thriving trade, which all our 
schools and entertainments, meetings, Bible 
classes, and sermons scarcely seemed to 
diminish. 
Futility of Of what use is it to preach temperance 

preaching 

temper- and morality where the conditions are such as 

ance and 

virtue almost to make them not merely self-denials 

amidst 

such DlI t martyrdoms ? Well, into this neighbour- 

circum- • 

stances. hood there 'walk the engineer and railway 
contractor, backed by the strong arm of 
government, and forthwith they shovel out 
the population, square by square, thousands 
of them, with their goods and chattels, into 
the streets, to seek elsewhere something they 
may call a home! Where are they to go ? 
They must live near their work. They can- 
not all seek out cottages at Barking, or Putney, 
or Hackney. They surge out of Somers- 
town and in upon the already over-crowded 
alleys and streets of St. Pancras — a mighty 
wave of hearthless and forlorn humanity. The 
single ones may get quartered on families and 
share a corner of one small room and an 



CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 55 



eighth or ninth of the family bed — that 
is to say, the floor. The families get into 
cellars, or encroach on the narrow space of 
other families, until, at higher rents, they 
have, in some mysterious way, found holes, 
like rabbits, where it would seem that every 
inch of the warren was already overstocked. 
Intolerable are the conditions of life, horrible 
the perils, moral and physical, dismal indeed 
the experiences of a population packed like 
that. Health there, is merely a name for 
modified disease, decency is fastidiousness, 
ordinary morality is a shining virtue, drunken- 
ness is almost venial. All they care for is a 
nights lodging! Most of them, men, women, 
or children, live in the streets all day. You 
think it no wonder, if you have examined 
their pens, that the bar of the gin-palace is 
crowded by pallid, dirty-faced wretches 
gloomily drinking their gin or beer ; and 
you look at some huge animal cruelly striking 
the thin creature who strives to guide him 
' homewards,' or at half-conscious mothers 
soothing their shrivelled infants with the 
poison that has dried up both nourishment 



56 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

and heart within their own breasts — or at 
boys of nine and ten with old, hard, fixed 
features and cunning eyes, taking their brandy 
and cigar. And, while you look and curse 
the agent of such degradation, you who have 
seen where these people herd and pen will 
say, ' If drink brings men to this, that also 
must bring them to drink.' God save us ! 
If that be all their wages can procure them of 
joy or comfort, what is left to them but to 
seek ' respite and nepenthe ' in suicide or 
intoxication ? 
is the pic- g U |; scmie one ma y say — as men have said 

ture exag- ** J 

gerated? to m6 before, who lived within a stones 
throw of these scenes — ' This picture which 
you give us is the painting of an excited, 
hysterical philanthropist. It may be correct 
of one or two places, but in the main it is 
exaggerated.' I reply, It is true of almost 
every district in London where the poor con- 
gregate. It is equally true of Manchester, of 
Liverpool, of Glasgow, of other great towns ; 
it is true, not merely of thousands, but of 
hundreds of thousands. Dr. French, the 
medical officer of Liverpool, reported that 



CITY AND TOWN POPULATION. 57 

26,000 houses in Liverpool were occupied by 
families in single rooms. Lord Derby's calcu- 
lation from this statement, that at least one- 
third of the population of Liverpool, 1 50,000 
persons, were living in these conditions, cannot 
be exaggerated. In St. George's, Hanover 
Square, the richest and most aristocratic 
district in the world, 450 persons were found, 
a short time ago, living in 12 houses. In 
St. Giles and Holborn 11,000 families live in 
single rooms. And what are these rooms 
like ? In one room visited, which was 12ft. 
by 13 and 7ft. 6in. high, lived 8 persons, 
paying a rent of four shillings a week. Is it 
possible to intensify the interest of these 
facts ? Yes ! you may even find some rooms 
occupied by relays of human animals. Per- 
sons engaged at or attending theatres at 
night, sublet their beds to market people, and 
when the market people turn out, the theatre 
people turn into the same beds. Here, in 
these awful depths, humanity asserts its 
brotherhood in misery, and the sacred com- 
munity of beasts is proved by their being tied 
up together in one sheet. 



58 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND, 



XXIX. 

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. 

SirST" ^ et us turn our t> ac k on towns and manu- 

a omers. f actureS) an( ^ s } c k at heart with the awful 

problems these sights suggest, hasten to 
breathe the pure air of the country. There, 
amid clipped hedges and shady lanes, by the 
gloriously green meads and mantling fields of 
wheat, by grove-crowned hills stretching their 
velvet-slippered feet down to the tiny rivers 
that purl and curl along the vales below, 
where all seems like Eden, and the meanest 
dwellings are picturesque with thatch and 
creeping rose or running vine, there at all 
events, say you, shall we find healthy and 
happy homes ! You reach village after vil- 
lage, and farm after farm, in some of the 
most populous southern counties, and con- 
verse with the old bent men who still ply the 
spade, or with the women who are toiling in 
the fields. 

They will take you to the cottage, with its 



THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS. 59 



little attic, where they and their seven, eight, 
or nine children have slept together for fifteen 
or twenty years. If you are a novelist of the 
modern school in search of new and horrible 
crimes, you may get some stories from the 
old women about their sons and daughters, 
which, if your soul does not shrink from see- 
ing human nature dissected and exposed in 
such ghastly shape, will enable you to outvie 
the most sensational authors in their peculiar 
line. I dare not hint to you American ladies 
and gentlemen of those things which benevo- 
lent Samaritans are obliged to sound of the 
depths of sorrow and wickedness in those 
fair country districts. Earning ten or eleven 
shillings a week ; on that expected to bring 
up their families ; regularly falling back in 
winter on the poor-rates ; always resorting to 
the parish dispensary and doctor in times of 
sickness ; ignorant, famine-fed, with a distress 
which has no outlet and little reprieve, such 
is the lot in many a district of merry England 
of those who till the soil. 



6o GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



XXX. 

STORY OF A FARM LABOURER AT LUDLOW. 

story of a I heard a man at Ludlow, before a 

farm 

labourer at crowded meeting of employes and labourers 

Ludlow. ^ , 

who had known him from his youth, tell the 
simple story of his experiences in life. 

' I was the son of a farm labourer. He 
earnt 8s. a week. I began as a boy to scare 
the crows, and went on till I could plough 
and drive a team, and reap and do amost 
anything. When I married, wages were nine 
shillin a week. We had five children, and 
then my wife fell ill. She were ill for two 
year off and on, lying in her bed, and slowly 
dying the whole time. The doctor said she 
wanted better food. We had nothing more 
to eat but bread, and a drop o' cabbage soup, 
and a bit o' bacon now and then. The 
doctor said the best thing for her was milk. 
I went to missis, (theer warn't no milk to be 
bought in the neighbourhood), and told her 
what the doctor said, and asked her fur to 






STORY OF A FARM LABOURER. 6 1 

sell me a little milk every day for my wife. 
She said, " Do 'ee spoase I can sell 'ee any 
milk when I want it to fatten the pigs ? " My 
wife didn't have no milk, and she died. I 
asked maister to increase my wages. He 
says, " No, Robert, I can't do that without 
the rest do it. If I was to rise wages 'thout 
they agreed, I daresent show my face to 
market. I can't afoord to pay no more 
wages." ' 

When you consider that these are not 
isolated and anomalous facts, but that they 
suggest the realities ofmundreds of thousands 
of lives, you will begin dimly to apprehend 
the extent and gravity of the problems which 
the English reformer has to face. 



XXXI. 

THE POOR LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 

But the picture is not yet complete. Before The Poov . 
I outline its redeeming features — and thank pauperism. 
God, there is sunshine too ! — there are yet 
shadows to be added. When Dante was 



62 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

investigating the infernal regions he was 
always coming on some place or incident 
worse than the last. So I have yet to intro- 
duce you, and I do it with a practical pur- 
pose as you will see, to that fearful closet 
of our great English house — the Poor-law 
System. 

Pauperism in England — that is, as a sys- 
tem of systematised poverty — is the growth 
of three hundred years. Taking its spring 
from the days of Henry VIII., it was esta- 
blished by an Act passed in the forty-third 
year of Queen Elizabeth. The principle of 
that Act is communistic. It is that everyone 
in England who cannot find or undertake 
employment is entitled to relief from the 
state : * perhaps/ says Professor Fawcett, 
' the most perilous responsibility ever assumed 
by a nation.' At first this relief was restricted, 
being given only to the impotent poor, and 
in the workhouse ; the able-bodied poor were 
compelled to work for it. 

In about a hundred and fifty years, 
whether it were owing to an increase of 
population in excess of the field of employ- 



THE POOR-LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 6$ 



ment, or from whatever circumstance, the 
number of claimants increased, unions of 
parishes were formed, and that practice of 
assisting able-bodied persons either wholly or 
in part without obliging them to enter a 
workhouse, now called ' outdoor relief,' was 
by degrees introduced. Men received grants See 
of money in aid of wages. Women received on^Pau- 



assistance in their homes. The greater the etc. 
number of children a man had the more he 
obtained from the guardians of the poor. So 
burdensome were the incidents of this system 
that Lazvs of Settlement were enacted to im- 
pose the responsibility of keeping these 
people on the parishes in which they were 
born or wherein they had lived for a certain 
length of time. The rates became enormous. 
The labouring classes, too well provided for, 
and sure of a maintenance, were thoroughly 
demoralised. In one case three generations 
of the same family were found to be receiving 
relief and drawing from the rates ioo/. a 
year. In one parish in Berkshire, the whole 
land was offered to the assembled paupers, 
but they refused it, preferring the ease of 
recipience to the troubles of ownership. 



pensm, 



64 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 
Modifica- The intolerable is an active, if displeasing 

tion of the 

Poor-Law. promoter of improvement. A new poor-law 
was one of the earliest products of the Re- 
form Parliament ; restraints were placed on 
the profligate system of outdoor relief, and 
matters improved under the influence of in- 
creasing prosperity ; but notwithstanding the 
marvellous development of English manu- 
factures and commerce, spite of free corn and 
free-trade, spite of reform legislation, better 
social conditions, zealous religion, active 
philanthropy, and lavish charities — spite of 
colonial emigration and an enormous exodus 
to the United States, there still lies upon the 
breast of England that ceaseless incubus of 
indolence and imbecility. In London one in 
every seven of the population receives relief 
in some shape or other from the poor-law 
authorities during the year. 

In i860 the population was 2,770,000, 
with 86,000 paupers. 

In 1863 the population was 2,904,000, 
with 94,000 paupers. 

In 1869 the population was 3,082,000, 
with 126,000 paupers. 



THE POOR-LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 65 

Costing 1,175,000/. stg., or $5,875,000 
per annum. 

In 1870 the population was 3,215,000, 
with 141,000 paupers. 

Costing 1,466,000/. stg., or $7,330,000 
per annum. 

In England one in every twenty is a 
pauper. What would you think in New 
York if every seventh man you met in the 
street were living on rates taken from vour 
pocket ? Or if in journeying over the union 
you knew every twentieth person to be in 
effect a beggar ? 

Through the whole country the paupers, 
exclusive of vagrants and casual poor, had 
increased in 1870 to 1,079,391. Happily, for 
the last two years the numbers have been 
materially less, but they are still at a standard 
you would deem to be fearful. In 1872 there 
were 977,664, of whom 153,000 were able- 
bodied adults. 

In some of the United States, where a 
system of poor relief analogous to that of 
England has been adopted, there are already 
symptoms of similar results. In various large 

F 



66 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

cities during this crisis the working men have 
advanced the dangerous demand for state 
works or state support. I warn you to be 
careful ! Mr. Fawcett points out that in 
Philadelphia, out of 120,000 poor persons 
receiving assistance, 110,000 received out- 
door relief. Such a statement is incredible — 
its verity is portentous for your future. Once 
encourage this vicious system — once admit in 
a country where no able-bodied man need 
starve, that he may rely for assistance on 
state or private charity without the condi- 
tion of entering a workhouse or engaging in 
labour for it, and a process of demoralisation 
will have begun, the end whereof none of you 
can forecast. You will have adopted a cub 
that may grow up to swallow its master. 

The results of this vicious system are 
illustrated in a startling way by Professor 
Fawcett. In England, where outdoor relief 
is given, the proportion of outdoor to indoor 
paupers is eight to one. In Ireland, land of 
misery and turmoil, with restrictions on out- 
door relief, the proportion is reversed, viz. 
five indoor to one outdoor, and the whole 



THE POOR-LAWS AND PAUPERISM. 6 J 

number of Irish paupers in a country of 
five and a half millions of people is one-half 
that of London alone. In the Highlands of 
Scotland, where the system of outdoor relief 
has been adopted, there is twelve times as 
much pauperism as in Ulster and Connaught. 
In England one in every twenty is a pauper ; 
in Scotland, one in every twenty-three ; in 
Ireland only one in every seventy-four. 

These facts are more eloquent than any Principles 

of chari- 

warning I could utter. The only principles table relief. 
on which charity, public or private, can be 
safely administered, are, that no man should 
be helped who can help himself, and that 
charity, public and private, should be or- 
ganised and concurrently administered. It 
is very hard to be obliged to say that private 
charity is often blind, stupid, profligate, and 
wanton in its management, but it is a truth 
we have learned in England. Remember 
that every act of relief to an able-bodied 
man or woman to whom any means of inde- 
pendent subsistence is both a duty and possi- 
bility, is a demoralisation of the recipient 
and an injury to society. 

F 2 . 



The four 
principal 

perils of 
English 
society. 



68 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

But I am not giving you a social-science 
lecture. I had only to point out to you what 
a monster we entertain in English society. 
There are in the West Indies minute para- 
sites that eat their way into the skin, and by 
and by lay their bag of eggs and encroach 
more upon the flesh until they produce a 
painful ulcer a thousand times larger than 
themselves, and which may even become 
fatal. Such a parasite is indolent and volun- 
tary poverty, encouraged or unregarded — a 
pest you should soon and vigorously eradicate. 



XXXII. 

THE FOUR PRINCIPAL PERILS OF ENGLISH 
SOCIETY. 

I think you will now be able to under- 
stand me when I state that the principal 
perils of English society are four in number. 
They arise ; 

i. From the efforts made by the upper 
and wealthy classes to retard the advancing 
power and resist the just claims of the 
working man. 



PERILS OF ENGLISH SOCIETY. 69 

2. From that mass of pauperism which I 
have described, which lives on the rates and 
seems to have such a horrible mystery of 
propagation. 

3. From the terrible, unparalleled power 
of degradation which, with increasing tyranny, 
is wielded by strong drink. And, 

4. From the deficiency of incitements, 
moral and material, to thrift and ambition 
among the working classes. 



XXXIII. 



FIRST DANGER: THE RELATION OF THE 
WORKING MAN TO POLITICS AND CAPITAL. 

The first danger, you will observe, is both First 

danger — 

political and social. Of this I might say the rela- 
tion of the 

enough to occupy a whole lecture. It has working- 
man to 

many branches. There is, for instance, the politics 

and 

agricultural labourer question. The resurrec- capital. 
tion of hinds — living half on the rates and 
half on a pittance the bare mention of which 
stirs your compassion, the slaves without 
being the property of their masters, ought 



70 GLANCES A T INNER ENGLAND. 

now to be a familiar story to you. I have 
never seen anything that has so moved me 
as I have been moved when I have stood by 
and watched these hopeless sons of toil,, 
long blinded to their rights and possibilities 
of improvement, opening their eyes to the 
blessed dawn of a better day under the 
stirring eloquence of Joseph Arch. When 
they began to gather from him the en- 
couraging assurance that there were privileges 
of manhood which they might assert, and 
opportunities to win a better future for their 
children, it was infinitely pitiful, yet, O how 
gladdening ! — to hear them blurting out their 
awakening ideas and half-timid yet invincible 
resolves. 
Effects of This movement must lead to important 

the agri- ._,'., . T 

cuitm-ai changes in English agriculture. It will alter 

labourers' 

resunec- the system of tenancy — it may cause the 
conversion of a great deal of arable land 
into pasturage ; it will quicken emigration. 
Above all, it is a Radical movement when the 
agricultural labourer gets the franchise, and 
must give impetus to the political and social 
changes impending in Great Britain. 



THE TRADES UNIONS. 7 1 

XXXIV. 

THE TRADES UNIONS. 

Hand-in-glove with the Agricultural The 
Unions are the great Trades Unions in Unions. 
the towns, numbering hundreds of thousands 
of members, with incomes of many thousands 
of pounds. In their contest with capital 
these Unions are very powerful — in their 
political combination they have been, as yet, 
weak and unsuccessful. They have wanted 
clear political aims — sound political judgment 
— trust in their leaders — and too often leaders 
whom they could trust. Hence they have 
readily exposed themselves to the gibes of 
the satirical journals of the privileged classes, 
or to the wanton and savage needle-thrusts of 
social cynics like Mr. W, R. Greg. But they 
are gradually emerging from the valley of 
shadows, they can already discern the anti- 
quated giants of privilege, trembling and 
biting their nails with futile anger ; and they 
will go on, prepared by experience and en- 
lightened by education, to victorious contests 
and a better life. 

*F 4 



72 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



XXXV. 

THE BATTLE BETWEEN CAPITAL AND 
LABOUR. 

The battle Capitalist and Unionist are cutting each 
capital and other's throats in England, as they are the 

labour. 

world over. The former has not yet learned 
that the conditions of contract are changed 
for ever, and that slavery at a low price can 
no longer be had for love or money. The 
Unionist, pressing for his rights, and too often 
ignorant of the real limits of those rights, 
asks too much or grasps it too eagerly, and 
threatens to kill the goose that lays the 
golden egg. Every allowance must be made 
for men who after centuries of injustice and 
of ignorance are made suddenly alive to 
their opportunities, but I, who sympathise 
with them and work with them, warn them 
not to go too fast and too far. So surely as 
they do, the reaction will come, with fatal retri- 
bution. Those who, from other classes, take 
part with them in this great struggle, spite of 



CAPITAL AND LABOUR. >]$ 

their occasional wrong-doing, their blindness, 
and their suspicions, are truer conservatives 
than the men who with sharp, cruel, and 
bitter words make light of their complaints, 
laugh at their claims, abuse their ignorance, 
and attempt to vindicate the arrogant and un- 
tenable claims of privilege and money. 

On both sides we need firmness and 
moderation. The old conditions, the old 
relations of capital and labour, are to be 
changed, are now changing. Some better 
methods of apportioning their respective 
profits must inevitably be devised. 

Large establishments are now successfully Co-opera- 

tion and 

conducted in England on the principle of co- industna 

partner- 
operation or of Industrial Partnerships. I ships. 

understand that the great steel works in 
course of erection at Glasgow, under the 
supervision of Mr. Michael Scott, who has 
given to this subject considerable attention, 
and has also tested it in practice, are to be 
managed on the Industrial Partnership prin- 
ciple. 

Every capitalist at this crisis — nay, I The 

crisis. 

would say every friend of humanity, — should 



74 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND, 

give himself to study the relations of capital 
and labour, and bend all his intellect, energy, 
and influence to smooth the change from the 
old to the new regime. However unpalatable 
the statement, that change is inevitable. It is 
attended with lamentable incidents. I have 
to own as to English workmen, as you will 
own as to those of America, how much of 
tyranny, of ingratitude, of absolute wrong- 
doing, of degraded use of improved circum- 
stances, has come under my own notice. 
But then conceive what a class must be 
growing up in such conditions as I have 
described to you. The effects are truly de- 
plorable. In one case I heard of a large 
ironmaster who had treated his men with 
unwonted liberality, and yet again and again 
found himself forced in the middle of some 
critical contract to raise their wages. Last 
year, as he was leaving for the continent, and 
giving directions to his manager, he said : 
1 At the end of the year you will not give 
the usual Christmas treat. Call the men 
together and discharge the whole of them. 
I'll have nothing more to do with working- 
men again.' 



CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 75 

A printer in London, who employs a large 
number of men, said to me : ' My men came 
last week and asked me if we were going to 
have the annual summer picnic I have been 
in the habit of giving them, and I turned 
them out of the office. They have been 
striking every six weeks, and they may pay 
for their own treats. They'll get no treats 
out of me.' 

This gentleman is a man not only of 
benevolence but of benevolent energy, but 
you see his sympathies are warped by his 
sense of injury. To me these are gravely 
significant facts. They could be indefinitely 
multiplied. They indicate a state of things 
which must be either appeased or give place 
to open war. Capitalists, who in existing 
circumstances insist on the old regime, or 
threaten to withdraw their capital from manu- 
factures — a silly and impracticable proceeding, 
as every economist knows — are assuming a 
terrible responsibility. They will then be 
left to face the question, ' What are these 
men to do without work ? ' And when lately 
in Wales a clique of capitalists were with- 






j6 GLANCES. AT INNER ENGLAND. 

standing 40,000 miners and ironworkers, the 
increased police, the prepared soldiery, and 
the fear of all England, showed what that 
may involve. 1 

1 These passages, written some months before the event, 
acquire increased significance from the recent movement of 
capitalists to establish a federation of capital. That the Eng- 
lish upper and wealthy classes were living in a fool's paradise, 
that they walked the upper ground unconscious of the peril- 
ous forces that were gathering beneath them, I have long 
maintained, but I could scarcely have conceived that they 
were so infatuated as these men seem to be. The gods must be 
in conspiracy against them. Mr. Bradlaugh and Mr. Odger 
could not have devised or desired a move better calculated to 
give a momentum to their projects. The antagonism of 
capital and labour was already defined with sufficient sharp- 
ness, and the difficulties of approximation were already too 
glaring. The capitalists were already combined by facts, 
and interests, and superiority of position, of ability, of politi- 
cal power, of privileges. It was all this, involving absolute 
supremacy, which necessitated on the part of the workmen 
organised combination for the purpose of asserting their 
simple rights and securing the position to treat on equal 
terms. But what shall we think of an association deliber- 
ately framed with the hostile object of fighting the unions 
with their own weapons ? 

I hope the workmen of Great Britain will observe the full 
significance of this proceeding. It was not enough to have 
had nearly the whole political power, to have for long years 
legislated chiefly for their own benefit, to have legislated 
directly against trades' combinations, to have governed by a 
House of Commons in which there is not a single working 
man. The capitalists now proclaim a crusade against labour ; 
they throw down the gage of war where everything, the 
happiness and prosperity of Great Britain, the Conservation 
ot her institutions, nay, of society itself, was calling out in the 



CAPITAL AND LABOUR. "J J 



This portentous question is beginning to 
shake the very pillars of society in almost 
every part of the civilised world. The Coolie, 
the Negro, the immigrants into western lands, 

most solemn tones for compromise and peace ! Hitherto 
the working-classes have been disorganised and fitful in 
their political and social action. Can there be any doubt 
that fronting this new power they will close together and be 
as one man ? 

There is one word, however, which in the interests of 
peace I must utter. At the end of Little Hodge I en- 
deavoured to illustrate a theory of pacification which has 
for some time appeared to me to be the most hopeful one. 
It was that a more complete organisation of the opposing 
forces might be the necessary precedent of their federation. 
In matters of this kind, where hostilities have to be compro- 
mised, there can be nothing better than two responsible 
bodies in a position to treat with each other. While there- 
fore it is clear that the working-men must now prepare to 
meet in fair combat the body which so directly challenges 
them, it would be criminal to overlook the fact that this 
body may probably before long become a means of compro- 
mising the most threatening issues. The worst feature of the 
new association is its expressed aim to promote the 'freedom 
of labour/ that is, as the Spectator properly says, to dis- 
courage combination. The other objects of the association 
are in themselves legitimate and harmless. If they can get 
working-men to read their arguments, and adopt them and 
endorse them at the polls, well and good. But I point out to 
them, as I point out to the workmen, that if they will throw 
aside the foolish and insane attack upon combination, it 
is possible that the more thorough the organisation on both 
sides the more satisfactory may be the settlement. Neither 
side can hope to suppress the unions of the other, but they 
can expect to meet them on equal terms, and to come to 
arrangements of universal application and benefit. 



tion ? 



7 8 . GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

the English artisan and peasant, the French 
and German workman, all alike are conspir- 
ing together to demand for labour a larger 
reward, a better coparcenary with capital. 
what is Is there to be no end to this unholy war ? 

the solu- 

Can humanity or Christianity invent no 
means of reconciling the irreconcilable, or is 
the frightful aphorism of Hobbes to be veri- 
fied and the natural state of man be perpetuated 
and aggravated in a condition of civilisation ? 
In God's name let every man, be he on one 
side or the other, lend a hand to stay the 
fratricidal strife ! Failing this, to neither side 
is there anything but ruin or dismay. I say 
to the capitalist solemnly and urgently : 
\ Recognise the inevitable as you would when 
you saw the hurricane sweeping along over 
the main ; take in sail, bout ship if need be, 
and sail before the wind. Make friends with 
forces that may be either friendly or hostile, 
as you will.' 

I say to the labourer : * Stay your hand. 
You have the numbers, and your victory is 
sure. Beware that it be not a contest over a 
stripped and barren land. Use your organi- 



CAPITAL AND LABOUR. 79 

sations not as a means of oppression but 
justice. You might succeed too well — in 
losing all.' 



XXXVI. 

DRINK AND PAUPERISM. 

As to drink, with an increasing consump- Drink and 

pauperism. 

tion every quarter swelling the revenue, the in- 
crease chiefly extracted from the better wages 
of the labouring class, I must leave you to 
imagine how terrible a subject that is. Drink 
is now an organised political power, returning 
brewers and distillers to Parliament, aiding 
Anglican and Papal divinity, degrading the 
constituencies, nay, demoralising the very 
government, which is obliged to make terms 
with the disastrous tyrant. Against this, and 
against the third peril, that of pauperism, 
temperance and social reformers are striving 
with noble energy, and not without hope. 



8o GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



XXXVII. 

THE FOURTH DANGER: DEFICIENCY OF 
INCITEMENTS TO THRIFT 

The fourth The fourth danger, namely, that of the ab- 

danger— . . 

deficiency sence of incitements, moral and material, to 

of incite- 
ments to thrift among the working classes, is more 

complicated and raises deeper issues. 

The effect of that poor-law which I have 
described, has been to sap the independent 
spirit of the labourers. In England it is but 
little a man can save, and that little di- 
minishes his prospects of help from the guar- 
dians of the poor. The poor-law reverses 
the maxim of Christ, ' To him that hath shall 
be given.' It is the careless, thriftless man 
or woman who, in old age, can retire to the 
poor-house or obtain the benefits of outdoor 
relief. Do you wonder that men are impro- 
vident under such a system ? Do you won- 
der that such a system has not confuted itself 
to the densest English intellect after two 
hundred years and more of trial ? 



DEFICIENT INCITEMENTS TO THRIFT. 8 1 

But ' besides the poor-law,' I am quoting Professor 

r . Fawcett. 

Professor Fawcett, ' another circumstance Discour- 
agement to 
which discourages prudential habits among saving. 

the working classes is the feeling that no 

amount of saving which it is possible for 

them to make will give them any reasonable 

prospect of rising in life.' There is little 

hope, or scope either, in business. The 

amount a working man can save is too small 

to enable any number to compete with larger 

capitalists and more accustomed tradesmen. 

Nor will their savings generally enable them 

to buy land. A monopoly in the hands of The land 

monopoly. 

the wealthy, subject to the disabilities created 
by primogeniture, which locks up large tracts 
of it in one family from generation to gene- 
ration ; held in masses by great corporations ; 
settled in the hands of trustees ; land, the 
most valuable heritage of society, is in Eng- 
land and Scotland the property of a few. 
Vast districts are destitute, and have been 
deliberately emptied of population to make 
room for sheep, grouse, or red-deer. Class 
laws, protecting game for the amusement of 
aristocrats and rich commoners, give the 

*g 



Our colo- 
nies and 
our states- 
men. 



82 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

land not only the nature of a luxury but also 
a factitious value for purposes foreign to the 
public good. The same laws operate to the 
discouragement of agriculture. The expenses 
of land transfer under a complicated land 
system are so great that a man who pur- 
chased a freehold property under 500/. in 
value would probably pay from 60/. to 100/. 
in law expenses. Thus the best field of 
ambition for a working man, the hope of 
acquiring a piece of land to till and dwell on, 
is denied to the English million. 

Is there any other outlet for the seething 
population ? Yes. There are our colonies 
and the United States, rich, free, crying out 
for the strong arms that at home dig and 
delve with hopeless energy for a daily skinful 
of meat and drink, to come and win an 
estate for themselves and their children. 
This opening we have for years urged the 
Government to facilitate. But the economist, 
bound to his fatal laws of supply and de- 
mand, has refused to listen ; the statesman, 
at once aristocrats and capitalist's friend, has 
declined to promote a reduction in the num- 



OUR COLONIES AND OUR STATESMEN. 83 

ber of British labourers, whatever the conse- 
quences ; both economist and statesman, in- 
different to anything but present material 
prosperity, have stigmatised the colonies as a 
useless burden and emigration as a blunder ; 
and the result is that they who might have 
made a whole empire strong and prosperous, 
who might have relieved the perilous plethora 
at home, facilitated the solution of some of our 
gravest problems, and developed in our pos- 
sessions a wealth that would have re-esta- 
blished English supremacy in the world, are 
left to meet those fearful conditions which I 
have depicted, while they have imperilled 
the very integrity of an empire whose splen- 
dour and extent were eulogised by Daniel 
Webster in words that can never die. 

In speaking to you of the England of to- Threat- 
ened decay- 
day, there is no confession I have to make of the 

imperial 

more mortifying than that of the threatened sentiment. 
decay of the imperial sentiment — that in- 
variable preliminary of national degradation. 
I say threatened, but happily, I trust, averted. 
It is in high quarters that we have seen these 
symptoms of degradation ; but only among a 
g 2 



84 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

select circle of economists or politicians. It 
is said that one of our greatest statesmen, 
not long since conversing with a gentleman, 
who in speaking of the British Empire 
argued that were it denuded of its colonies 
it would dwindle to the position of Holland, 
replied — 

1 And what of that ? Is not a Hollander 
as happy as an Englishman ? ' 

There is no more significant symptom 
of national decadence than the dying out 
of the imperial sentiment. It is perilous 
enough when a people coddled in luxury 
and surfeited with riches begin to be in- 
different to the national safety, but it is fatal 
when they count with parsimonious thrift the 
cost of maintaining their integrity, and would 
purchase ease and peace with the loss of 
.some of the national soil. Had a temper so 
ignoble begun to canker this great common- 
wealth, and had the disease entered so deep 
that not even the sharp knife of war could 
excise it, who would not have said, as he 
looked upon the inglorious though mighty 
fragments of a nation so soon disjointed, 



DECAY OF THE IMPERIAL SENTIMENT. 85 

that its people had been miscreants, un- 
deserving of their freedom and unworthy of 
their greatness ? 

In England, against this spirit of cold, 
unnatural economy, there have fortunately 
been men found to protest. When, some 
time ago, ministers gave vent to significant 
expressions of indifference to the loyalty of 
the colonies, withdrew British soldiers from 
Canada and New Zealand, when Mr. Glad- 
stone suggested that the most a British states- 
man could do was to prepare the way for 
colonial independence, there was an outburst 
of feeling in England which showed that the 
British lion was not yet dead. He would 
be a reckless minister who would now stand 
up in the House of Commons to propose the 
separation of the colonies from Great Britain ; 
and that would be a daring nation, which, 
relying on the British love of peace, should 
Venture to violate one foot of our vast terri- 
tories, or to attempt to seduce any colony 
from its allegiance. 



86 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



XXXVIII. 

THE INHERENT GREATNESS AND STRENGTH 
OF ENGLAND INDICA TED B Y THE STEADI- 
NESS OF HER PROGRESS IN REFORM. 

The in- Were I speaking of any other country you 

herent 

greatness might well say that I had been depicting a 

and 

strength of condition of things which was hopeless. But 

England & r 

indicated we are speaking of England — a land accus- 



steadiness tomed to disconcert probabilities and pro- 
of her pro- 



by the 
steadin 
of her ] 

RefV n phecies. For our wonderful nation carries 
these evils stoutly, and with every promise of 
redress. What marvels have not our re- 
formers already achieved without bloodshed 
or rebellion ! 

No period of history is more fruitful and 
extraordinary than that of Great Britain since 
the beginning of this century. Recall the 
names of our reformers — of Wilberforce, of 
Brougham, of Peel, of Russell, of Cobden 
and Bright, of Gladstone, what a history of 
judicious and ever-progressive statesmanship 
do they suggest ! 



REVIEW OF REFORMS. 8 J 

Slavery was abolished at a cost of Review of 

Reforms. 

20,000,000/. sterling. Before the year 1828 
no dissenter could hold a corporate office 
without taking the communion in the Church 
of England ; and in that year Lord John 
Russell — a man greater and more fortunate 
in his home than his foreign policy — had the 
Test and Corporation Acts repealed. That 
was the beginning of a struggle for the 
liberation of religion in England which is 
•not yet ended. Next the reformers proceeded 
to remove the political and civil disabilities 
which at that time debarred Roman Catholics 
from enjoying the full rights of citizenship. 
The first Reform Bill, enlarging the con- 
stituencies and abolishing the worst of those 
pocket-boroughs which gave to their aristo- 
cratic owners the privilege of returning mem- 
bers to Parliament, came next. 

The Reform of the Constituencies was 
followed by the Reform of Municipal Cor- 
porations and of the Poor Law, and by that 
measure which with its collateral develop- 
ments of Free Trade has made England the 
wealthiest of nations, I mean the Repeal of 



88 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 

the Corn Laws. Next followed to perdition 
the old navigation laws. Later on we have 
had another Reform Bill presented to us by 
Mr. Disraeli, giving household suffrage in 
the towns, though not yet in the counties. 
We have disestablished the Irish Church ; 
we have reformed the Irish land laws ; we 
have abolished the compulsory payment of 
rates to the Established Church by Dissen- 
ters ; we have admitted Jews to Parliament ; 
we have framed, though not yet perfected, a 
great national system of education ; we have 
begun to reform the laws relating to Public 
Health ; we have reorganised that strong- 
hold of privilege the Army, and have im- 
proved our system of Judicature ; we now 
protect voters in municipal and parliamen- 
tary elections by the Ballot. Such a list of 
reforms accomplished in the lifetime of one 
man, like Earl Russell, who has taken more 
or less part in all these measures, while it 
recalls to you the intolerable conditions of 
English society and politics at the beginning 
of this century, also indicates the inherent 
greatness and vitality of a nation which, en- 



REVIEW OF REFORMS. 89 

gaged in battling with evils so prodigious, 
has nevertheless gone on developing in popu- 
lation, and wealth, and commerce and manu- 
factures, in religion and philanthropy, at a 
rate, taking all these things together, hardly 
surpassed by any other nation. Striking in- 
deed would be the history, had I time to 
review it, of the social changes wrought in 
England, of its material development, of the 
improved condition of its artisans, of the 
magnificence of its charities. Still I have 
shown you how much there remains for the 
reformer to do ; what dangers evil laws, bad 
statesmanship, centuries of wrong, class privi- 
lege, wicked wars, and vices permitted to 
grow into the body politic, have left us. I 
pray you be careful, as men who hold in your 
hands the destinies of the future, that you 
leave not to your posterity the dreadful legacy 
of such problems as these. There are ever 
sprouting in the body politic the beginnings 
of parasitical growths that may, like tropical 
vines, embrace and kill the tree on which 
they climb. 



90 GLANCES AT INNER ENGLAND. 



XXXIX. 

REFORM IN ENGLAND IS SLOW AND STEADY. 

Reform in Fortunately for England, her people are 

slow and slow and steady in their methods of reform. 

steady. . 

In other nations the evils long endured 
among us would have been swept away by 
torrents of blood. With us they have dis- 
appeared in more dignified and benignant 
courses. The deeply imprinted love of order, 
of constitution, of law, is the real safety of 
England amidst dangers that blanch the 
cheek of a thinking man. Reforms with us 
win their successes not only over the wills 
but over the wits of the people. And the 
truest, healthiest reforms must ever work 
thus. I love ever to hear the voice of reform 
coming not in the mighty rushing wind but 
in the still small voice that penetrates to 
and moves the minds and the hearts of the 
people. It comes best not as the hurricane, 
or the deluge, or the earthquake, but as the 
majestic swelling of the mighty tide, rising 



REFORM SLOW AND STEADY. 91 

with slow but omnipotent force, kissing its 
way from pebble to pebble, moving so gently 
that the frailest shallop floats unharmed upon 
its smiling bosom ; and by and by it reaches 
some ancient rock of privilege, some hardened 
relic of vested wrong, and circling around it 
with heightening waters at length overtops 
and hides it from view ; and now and then it 
reaches some bark of reform, stranded or 
never launched, and with gradual but resist- 
less power raises it inch by inch and foot by 
foot, until at length, as it floats free upon the 
smiling surface, the mariners within can hoist 
their sails and bear away, freighted with 
blessings for all mankind. 



LONDON ! PRINTED BY 

SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 

AND PARLIAMENT STREET 



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